Eutychus and His Kin: August 31, 1959

LABOR RALLY

My dear Eutychus,

Sorry to trouble you at your vacation cabin, but I wanted to remind you that we are counting on your participation in our Labor Day program. I know you are anxious to return. The storm damage to your property was relatively slight. The water level in the basement was perhaps raised a little by the overflow from a bathroom fixture that was not shut off. Nothing that plaster and paint won’t fix!

About our plans for Labor Day—my sermon topic for Sunday is “Working for Christ,” and we have announced a Church Labor Union Organization Rally for 2 p.m., on Monday. This description of the meeting has attracted unusual interest, and I appreciate your suggesting it. A few have taken the announcement quite literally. A local labor organizer, who preferred not to give his name, warned me that preachers had no business meddling in labor politics.

The religious news commentator on our local station took the edge off the phrasing by indicating that the rally was for church workers and would spark a crusade for lay participation in the church program. Perhaps it is just as well not to push your clever wording too far.

It is high time that our members began to think of themselves as united workers rather than bench warmers. When our Painters’ Local is organized, one of its first projects will be to paint out the “Come ye apart and rest awhile” lettering over the north entrance. When so many active members manage to sleep through every sermon and regard this performance as their principal Christian activity, another invitation would seem more appropriate. What would you think of “Work today in my vineyard”?

Our Labor Rally will include a panel discussion on “Full-time Christians,” and we expect to organize into “Locals” for united action in various phases of church work. We have questions about some of your suggestions. Most of us feel you were not serious in proposing that every member carry a worker’s union card, and that we be known as “the church of the union shop.” Were you?

As ever,

RELIGION’S ENEMY

I have just read the article by J. Edgar Hoover “The Bitter Enemy of Religion” (June 22 issue).… I do not like his inference that the monastery is a symbol of Christianity. After more than a half-century in a Catholic community I fear the Roman Catholic hierarchy far more than communism. I consider it more anti-Christian.

Carroll, Iowa

The fact that we are so eager to accept moral, religious, and philosophical judgments from respected, famous government officials without a second word is itself enough to raise a question, as it did in Constantine’s day or should have done in his day.…

Hoover needs to have an answer. His nationally-approved or state religion is always blinding to a prophetic voice, or perhaps it is what stirs up and demands a prophetic voice. His appraisal of communism leaves much to be desired—his points 2 through 6 could be applied with equal vehemence by a communist against capitalism. In affronting the communist menace, Hoover, although a sincere Presbyterian Christian, overlooks the main point of all, that communism is an anonymous dialecticism, and its answer from the Christian point of view is not further absolutes and anonymity but reference to a living personality, Christ, our Lord.

Elgin, Ill.

THE BALANCES

Your brief editorial “Twentieth Century Perspectives Weighed in the Balances” (June 22 issue) dealing with the United Presbyterian Church’s stand on scientific contraceptives and refusal to take action on the question of the Virgin Birth, was truly unbalanced. The Virgin Birth problem could not be dealt with in the context in which it came before the Assembly. I think both actions showed churchmanship at its best.

As regards the Virgin Birth, when will CHRISTIANITY TODAY arrive at mature biblical scholarship and see that it isn’t how our Lord was the Logos of God, but that he was. Why keep sniping at churches and clergymen who give full consent to the Incarnation but see no relationship with this central doctrine and a method?

University Presbyterian Church.

West Lafayette, Ind.

The confirmation by the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of the appointment of Theodore Gill to the Presidency of San Francisco Seminary, even though he was unable to furnish satisfactory proof of his acceptance of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, furnishes additional evidence of the doctrinal laxity within this body. This contention is not disproved by the fact that the June issue of Presbyterian Life was devoted almost entirely to a review of the glories of Presbyterian and Reformed Theology. Neither is it successfully refuted by the statement of Dr. Mackay: “Calvinistic to the core, I believe we are predestined to give leadership to the churches of the nation and the world.” These sound like empty words in face of the fact that the Presbyterian Church has, by arbitrary and questionable methods, eliminated from her membership some of her ablest scholars and staunchest exponents of the Reformed faith, while at the same time giving highest honors and offices to men unwilling and unable to affirm faith in doctrines held in common by nearly all branches of the Christian Church. These are some of the unsavory fruits of “inclusivism” which triumphed in the reorganization of Princeton Seminary in 1929.

Minneapolis, Minn.

THE COMING OF THE LORD

Dr. Loraine Boettner’s review of Hughes’ book, A New Heaven and a New Earth (May 25 issue) gives a little known quotation from Dr. G. Campbell Morgan—a statement he made in 1943 indicating his change of views relating to “the promises made to Israel.”

A dozen or more years before that date, during a Boston pastorate, I was privileged to attend a course of lectures given by Dr. Morgan at Gordon College. He was always most gracious in answering questions. At the end of one session I ventured to ask: “After your long study and extensive exposition of the Bible, Dr. Morgan, do you find any scriptural warrant for the distinction which many Bible teachers draw between the second coming of the Lord for his own (the rapture), and the coming of the Lord with his own (the revelation) with a time period of 3½ or 7 years between these two events?”

“Emphatically not!” Dr. Morgan replied. “I know that view well, for in the earlier years of my ministry I taught it, and incorporated it in one of my books entitled God’s Method with Man. But further study so convinced me of the error of this teaching that I actually went to the personal expense of buying the plates of that book from my own publisher and destroying them. The idea of a separate and secret coming of Christ to remove the church prior to his coming in power and glory is a vagary of prophetic interpretation without any Biblical basis whatsoever.”

As I travel about the country in an itinerant ministry which takes me into a great variety of churches, I am impressed with the way in which pastors are expressing their appreciation of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Many of them say, “It’s the most helpful and spiritually stimulating magazine that I receive.”

Oak Park, Ill.

PROBLEM OF POWER

I am a visitor to your country from the island of Ceylon. I have been reading some of the conversations on “Communist or Free” (May 25 issue). There is … a problem of power, as between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union.… It is important for us to appreciate this factor, if only because it is precisely this factor of power which heightens our tendency to equate Communism with the hosts of darkness. Clearly, the fact of the matter is that the basic power struggle would continue even if the Soviet became officially Christian and its forms of government underwent a process of “liberalization.” It is surely also this inherent power struggle between America and Russia which makes it hard for American Christians easily to separate a natural desire that America should triumph anyway, from a concern for the triumph of Christian principles.…

For three hundred years or so, a Christian West held unchallenged sway of the fortunes of the world—this was the heyday of colonialism, white race superiority theory, and here American isolationism. After all this period of control of Africa and Asia, these areas are officially described by UNESCO as “have-not” and “under-developed” lands.… Dr. Boyd Orr has just reported that China has jumped the population-food gap. And this is a remarkably short space of time.

The Bible often talks of “judgment” and even suggests that God is able to use heathen powers to purge His people.

Chicago, Ill.

ELUSIVE NEUTRALITY

If schools cannot speak for God, why be allowed to speak against Him?

Canterbury, Conn.

QUAKER POSITION

In the article by Richard C. Wolf (April 27 issue) there is a very embarrassing and erroneous general summary of the theological position of the Quakers in America. No doubt Mr. Wolfs association with a few Quakers has caused him to class the Quakers in the category of outstanding liberal denominations such as the Universalists and Unitarians. Such a general categorizing is definitely not correct.… Most anyone who has had experience within the majority of the American Yearly Meetings knows that the greater majority of American Quakers believe in historical Christianity as taught in the Old and New Testaments with a belief in their inspiration.

In Collier’s Encyclopedia, one of the most recent summarizing statements of the Society of Friends, by Henry J. Cadbury, a Quaker and previous Hollis professor of Divinity, Harvard University, states that “the principles and practices of the Quakers were not novel, the Quakers themselves claim that they are in accordance with the New Testament …, they trusted in the guidance of the Spirit, so long as it did not positively contradict the Bible.” “… New waves of Evangelistic Conservatism have continued in the United States”.…

Friends University

Wichita, Kan.

CALLED IN JAPAN

I was very impressed by “Security” (L. Nelson Bell, May 25 issue). I have experienced these priceless gifts in my own life. And there are so many who seem to be missing this. Your expression should be very encouraging and helpful to many.

Would you have any objection if I have this made into a tract? I can do so here in Japan.… I am on duty here …, having been a Naval Officer and Aviator for 20 years now. Over six years ago God called me out in Christ Jesus in a wonderful way.

San Francisco, Calif.

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